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Impact | VIFF Impact

Once one of the most effective community organizing groups in America, ACORN was reduced to ashes by two conservatives posing as a pimp and a prostitute. This film charts a sad story: progressive activism met with rabid right-wing opposition, climaxing in a shady, manipulative sting operation. What emerges is a portrait of polarization: a country stuck in the divide between two opposing ideologies and a fractured media culture in which deception and demonization run rampant.

Key to this story is the rise of Breitbart Media. ACORN was a key target of the ultra-conservative noise machine, and nobody fought harder against it than the now-infamous media group. Driven by rage and a siege mentality, Breitbart rode a wave of outrage to national prominence. We can see the results today: alt-right activism gone mainstream and Donald Trump in the White House. This film will stoke anger in progressives, but directors Reuben Atlas and Sam Pollard are no propagandists. Inquisitive and fair-minded, they paint a warts-and-all picture of ACORN and offer a balanced perspective on highly emotive issues. Informative, engaging and dramatic, this doc is essential viewing for anyone looking for clues to a political train wreck. How did an idiotic, bigoted incompetent win the presidency? Many of the answers are right here in this film.

Director: Amanda Zackem / USA, 2016, 15 min.Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and activist Chris Hedges discusses modern-day consumerism, totalitarian corporate power and living in a culture dominated by pervasive illusion. An incredibly succinct analysis of society on the edge of collapse from the writer of War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning and American Fascists, this is an illuminating and frightening view of the possible future in these trumped-up times.